by Paul Butler
Florence stares into the milky greyness wondering about that gift, remembering the tiny clutching hands as the little animal stood on her shoulder. The memory merges into the star in the eye of her portrait which stands on her bedroom dresser. There was such humour and optimism in that drawing too. Was this merely the flattery of a paid artist, or was there really something different about her then? It all feels as distant to her now as ancient Egypt must seem to the crumbling bones and bandages in the British Museum. The car slows to a halt by the curb. The lights of the nearest building blur through the fog, sending a little wave of trepidation through Florence’s heart. Am I really going to go into battle tonight? she asks herself as she leans forward to pay the driver. Have I really left hearth and home for the dank uncertainties of this alien territory and unknown foes?
The driver opens the door for her at last and Florence steps onto the cold ringing pavement. She feels the indifference of the man like tiny icicles in her bones as he zooms off into the darkening fog. She looks up at the Methodist-plain block building before her. She finds it hard to believe that this is where her enemies are hiding. Bland yellow squares of light puncture the greyness all around her, one below, one above.
She forces herself to move without thinking, pushing the heavy painted door which is wedged slightly open. The dust of a low-grade government office or public library pervades her senses in the austere hallway. She can well imagine Bolshevik rumblings echoing around this unwholesome space with its grey, white and black floor tiles and its wide featureless stairway and bannisters leading up. She obeys a neat chalk-written message and arrow on a small sandwich board and begins to ascend the wide stairway. Loneliness reverberates in her heart with each accompanying step. As she reaches the top of the staircase and glimpses the rows of cheap wooden chairs through the open double doors, she feels an unbearable greyness descending. Her face burns as she crosses the threshold avoiding the glances of several curious, drab intellectuals, some young, some her son’s age. To her alarm, one of the men, who walks with a harassed air between the screen and the projector, screwdriver in hand, even looks a little like William – round-shouldered and glum-faced. It’s as though they could both be part of the same tribe of such creatures.
Florence takes a seat, scanning the others who number fourteen or fifteen in all. She is clearly the oldest here. But she is pleased to see she is not the only single woman. There are two others who appear neither to be accompanied, nor to be together, although they do seem startlingly similar to each other, both about Maud’s age but dressed like librarians in deliberately unflattering brown and grey.
The man with the screwdriver now shuffles his feet. He coughs and the sparse audience ceases to murmur. “Good evening,” he says, the screwdriver still in his hand. “Some new faces today, I believe,” he adds, squinting, Florence feels, in her direction. She feels her blood race again in fear of discovery, but no one looks around. “The film we are lucky enough to have acquired for this evening is a rather remarkable one, reflecting the exciting new movements in German art and the way it translates into the medium of film.” The man shuffles, full of nervous twitchings and awkward enthusiasm. Florence is disappointed that her enemies should remain hidden beneath such bland and human exteriors. His gentleness is confounding her. “It’s a small-scale production, particularly when compared to the very large filmmaking on America’s west coast. But that is not necessarily to its detriment. The subject of this film,” he pauses looking for the right words, and Florence feels her chest hammering in anticipation of what he is going to say about her husband, “is perhaps a surprising one. Um … the filmmakers have chosen a rather old-fashioned Gothic relic, one that might have seemed to be out of date in terms of style even when it was written twenty-five years ago. But they have turned it into something remarkable.”
A flash of violence runs through Florence. She feels her sinews tighten and her breathing turn to short gasps. This is worse than anything. Not only are these people failing to be outraged at the plunder of her husband’s work, they are actually lauding the vandals and disparaging the rightful owner! She comes to the very brink of shouting out and interrupting him. But she is held back for a moment, not by shyness but by some vaguer impotence – by the simple task of finding the right words. There are so many choices, so many valid reasons for urgent protest that she finds herself delayed by the selection. And, as the light goes out and the screen flickers to life, she finds her pounding heart beginning to settle. She finds that the interruption she would have found easy a few moments ago suddenly becomes much harder. Uncertainty and selfconsciousness have gripped her. She is watching a performance, and her long acquaintanceship with the theatre has taught her that there is nothing more sacrilegious than upsetting an audience.
THERE IS A happy silence between William and Mary. The morning room clock ticks cozily, its creaking wood acknowledging the ease of the situation. Gloved by this feeling, they have drifted onto the subject of Dracula again. Mary is excited by her theory; it is a love story, she has tried to explain. William leans forward, takes a sip of tea and listens. Her freshness charms him and she is gaining in confidence and eloquence.
“Don’t you see what I mean?” she says, moving forward in her chair. “It’s all about people longing to connect with each other, as though they can’t get close enough except by drinking each other’s blood and sharing thoughts, and when Mina says that Dracula is the saddest soul of all, it’s as though she wants the same thing too.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” William says, warmly taking a sip of tea. “People aren’t allowed to love in this country. I’m sure at it’s core, Dracula is a sad love story.”
William has taken himself by surprise. Not allowed to love. The phrase repeats in his head. What did I mean by that? he asks himself. The phrase came out with such conviction and melancholy, he is afraid he has broken through the barriers of propriety when he was not ready to do so. Mary is looking at him intimately too, as though she believes he is talking about himself. A tingle goes through him, a double charge; half excitement, half fear. He realizes he is within easy reach of the girl’s emotions. And now that her face glows under the influence of the hearth, and her skirt hisses gently as she moves, he is intoxicated by the power he apparently wields.
William glances at the fire which glows steadily but sizzles now and again with an unusual amount of ash on the surface. He tries to slow himself down, remembering how he felt before he arrived, about the girl’s youth and vulnerability. But it is hard because now she looks older and less helpless. In the evening and the glow of firelight, her skin has taken on an almost voluptuous translucence and her eyes and lips are those of a woman, not a girl.
William moves uneasily in his chair and tries to pin his thoughts down to the original intention of his visit, to his plan to put the financial proposal to his mother. There was something noble about this mission, he tries to tell himself; he should not sully it. But an echo twists darkly at the tail of this thought. How else might my motivations be viewed? it mocks.
William catches Mary’s sympathetic, smiling face and reaches out for a subject that might distract him.
“Have you finished Dracula?” he asks.
Mary’s expression drops suddenly. “No,” she replies. “I won’t be able to finish it now.”
“Why not?” asks William confused, thinking he has missed something.
“Mrs. Stoker found out and destroyed it.”
“Destroyed what?” He thinks of the film, not understanding. “You mean the book?”
Mary looks at the fire and then at William. William fixes on the piles of ash between and over the coals. He raises himself from the chair and approaches the hearth, his eyes resting on the grey dust and what now shows itself to be scattered, scorched paper. He turns to Mary again.
“She burned your book?”
“She made me put it in the fire.”
Her voice is wounded and her eyes glisten with incipient tears
. William feels the ghosts of Irving’s fingertips on his face, and the smell of greasepaint and turpentine overlay the curious burned fragrance in the room. The two events – book burning and face painting – clang together like great bells announcing a new kind of connection between himself and the girl. There is something in the very substance of both actions that breathes the same fumes. And there is some quality in Mary and in the child he once was that now bleed together in William’s mind. He recognizes the fear and hurt in Mary’s voice just as if it were once his own. Her age does not matter, nor does her ability to pinpoint the injustice in her accuser’s actions; in terms of her ability to defend herself she is a child, and it is the helplessness that seeps through her words.
Rogue and knight begin battling in William’s mind again – shields and swords clashing and armoured bodies tumbling. Mary joins him at the hearth unexpectedly and they are both silent. “I’ll lend you my copy,” William says. “And, don’t worry. I’ll have a talk with my mother and sort all this out.” He feels Mary lean towards him and senses her trust. Suddenly, they are orphans together, viewing the ashes of their home. A new kind of comfort descends upon William. He will inevitably do the right thing. The knight is winning. He may as well make it a willing and resounding victory, not one edged until the last moment with conflict and uncertainty. He gives Mary up in that instant, resolving to help her instead.
THE BOULDER IN William’s chest swells and turns as he slopes off down his mother’s street. The fog has mixed with factory air, creating an unwholesome cocktail, and the chill has him turning his coat collar upward. He wishes he was home. A vision of Maud at her needlepoint flashes before him. He thinks of the quiet, patient, certain air she has about her, and the way her calm gaze sticks to a purpose. The boulder heaves again and he realizes how closely the two correlate – his yearning unhappiness and thoughts of his wife. An unanswered question returns. “People aren’t allowed to love in this country,” he said to the girl, a sentence quite unbidden and unspoken before that moment. What did he mean by it? He knew right away he did not mean Mary; the words had rolled out with the sadness of some years and from a cave, normally inaccessible, deep within his heart.
William sees Maud, her face touched by fire glow as she reads from his father’s book, infuriating him. He thinks of the twin barriers of fear and dishonesty that keep his own thoughts from his wife. He visualizes a huge, wrought iron and dusty chest with a secured lock at the front and a chain wrapped around many times, tight enough for its rust to have become moulded into the metal. The phrase repeats in his head, not allowed to love, and he realizes he was not talking about a book, society, or forbidden desire he felt for the girl. He now knows he was talking about himself and Maud.
CHAPTER X
The screen is alive with fear – crooked shadows, madness, storm-bound ships and scurrying rats. Florence’s plan to disrupt the evening has long since subsided. She is trapped by the studious young people on either side, by the nauseating power of the film, and by her growing shyness. The film’s style does hold some threadlike connection with her husband’s writing, something beyond plot, an echo of Bram’s twisted nightmare imagination.
If she had really considered her plan in advance she would have realized these things were bound to happen, that she would be unable to object or even to leave. Why should I so want to trick myself like this? she wonders, staring at the flickering image of the ghost ship floating into the harbour, its mast reaching into the grey sky. The answer comes in the scent of ashes and the dull sound of a book hitting the coals, sending snakelike hisses into her room. She realizes that in burning the book she crossed a line, and that her crumpled, abject manner while she acted was a sign of the profoundness of her desecration.
A tinny piano in the corner of the lecture room sounds a predictable accompaniment, shuddering at moments of fright, as the creature with the pointed head and long fingernails now emerges from the ship’s hold with a disgusting smile, rats scampering around his shoulders and spilling onto the deck. Florence wonders why people would want to submerge themselves in such degradation. Is real life not horrible enough? she berates them. Do you have to fill your eyes and ears with the darkest of fears brought to life?
Then she wonders how much of this accusation is aimed at the audience and how much at her husband. Florence’s temples burn and numbness descends. She watches with just a touch of masochism as the vampire and his vermin army arrive in civilization and spread the plague. She feels that this is what has happened to her own country. Since Bram and his generation faded away, Florence and her kind have been left unprotected – exposed to the ignorance of sweeping change, to the grasping hands wishing to tear down what they do not understand, to Mary with her assumptions of equality that show through her ingenuous face, to the unfamiliar which has itself become her enemy, to the battalions of insects silently gnawing at the foundations of her house.
The vampire creature crawls up a staircase casting a hunchback shadow on the wall. Sickness swirls around Florence’s head. She feels a growing heat crackling inside her like a bonfire. The woman lies face up in her bed and the shadow of the vampire’s hand reaches over her breast, closing violently into a fist over her heart as though wringing the life out of her.
THE WOMAN SCREAMS silently and Florence finds herself mumbling an “excuse me” into the darkness and trying to rise. But something is wrong: the room sways around her, and her hands come into contact with a stranger’s hard elbow and then a knee. Wooden chair legs flicker under blue light in front of her eyes and she can smell shoe leather. Florence is vaguely aware of a fuss of whispering around her. A strong hand has grasped her around the arm and furniture is being scraped backwards. In a few moments more, she is sitting on a chair with a semicircle of people around her. The flickering blue light is shocked away by startling yellow. Faces bear down on her from every direction. The nervous red-haired man that reminds her of William is twitching and pulling at his beard, his eyes now edged with worry. He is asking someone if he can get into an office with a telephone. The dowdy women watch Florence intently. One whispers to the other something about not moving her.
“Where do you live?” the taller of the women asks her, leaning forward. The words penetrate Florence’s ears slowly as though through cotton wool. The girl is kind, almost motherly as nurses are supposed to be, Florence thinks. She tries to answer and manages to mumble her address on the second attempt. The dowdy woman presses her shoulder and promises, “Don’t worry, we’ll get you home.”
Within seconds, it seems, Florence is in the back of a car, the same woman by her side. Did I miss something? Florence wonders. Vague images, like dreams, have passed by her. Was she really carried like Caesar down the stairs, supported at her elbows and at the back of her thighs, worried voices crisscrossing from one side to another? Through the car window she sees the fog has begun to clear, and the passing streetlights show like yellow blotches. The night is shiny and wet. Florence tells her companion that her husband is dead. She says this as though it is something that has just happened and can’t think how to correct herself. The woman looks at her sympathetically. She takes Florence’s hand for a second and tells her that everything will be all right. Then Florence slips away, beyond the skimming lights and rising mist, away from the ugly film which peels from her imagination like paper in the wind. Floating, she weaves between potted palm trees and oriental flowers, over tables and chairs with white tablecloths, silver cutlery and crystal decanters. Candlelight flickers in the silver and glass, spilling gold like syrup into the joyfully murmuring space. Men shine in black formal evening dress; women glisten and laugh. A turban or sari compliments the harmonious arrangement like a shimmering flower in foliage of luscious green.
AND AT THE side of the banquet, on a long table, she finds her younger self. She merges into this handsome woman who sits three seats down from her husband, craning her neck his way and smiling. The lavish celebration is upon the stage. The auditorium yawns,
its sweep of empty seats looking rather like a backdrop. Someone mentions this and the surrounding company agrees. Words spill out with the ease of liquid honey,ideas embraced and passed on by the group with an unusual consciousness of shared emotions. A Union Jack hangs at the back of the stage, overlooking them all with a portrait of the new king at the centre.
A flavour of momentousness hangs in the air; the century is at last turning, a year or two too late. It needed something to happen first. The death of Victoria and the crowning of a new king provided it. Fear, nostalgia and sadness tumble in the great crashing wave of excitement and Florence, her husband, Irving, Ellen, all of them in the great Lyceum band, are at the very centre of it all.
A glass clinks and Bram stands – a handsome, upright man. She listens with gratitude to the hush and the ungrudging attention paid him. She watches his shining grey eyes with their mournful sincerity. With a profound contentment she listens to his softly spoken phrases, witnessing how he seems to describe the very fabric of their shared emotion.
“We, who have appointed ourselves guardians of that divine fountain of wisdom and inspiration that is the theatre,” he says with a gentle pause, “whether the sacred duty we have undertaken is with hammer and nails, mathematical spreadsheets, paints and canvas, costumes, or whether we are in the very front lines with the footlights glaring upon grease-painted faces …” he gazes at his audience fixing them as though through some quiet hypnosis, “all of us understand in some small way the profound joy of service and devotion to a thing far greater than ourselves. All of us feel that vital thrill of being part of a great performance which is the result of many individual parts coming together selflessly.”